10.3.9 problems with FTP server - port not open?

I think I might have got a bit farther with this problem, but this just gets me nearer to the problem, not to a solution.

When I stop the ftp service I get an error message in the console that says:

server servermgr_ftp: ftp config:Error:Unable to hup xinetd - pid file shows pid='(null)'

I believe that this means that Server Admin has tried to get xinetd to read its config file but since xinetd is not running (and hence no pid is available) it is unable to do this.

If I try and start xinetd from the terminal I get the following error message:

server xinetd[5484]: bind failed (Permission denied (errno = 13)). service = ftp
server xinetd[5484]: 5484 {init_services} no services. Exiting...

I now know that xinetd is the process that (amongst other things) listens on port 20-21 for an attempt to establish an ftp session and then launches ftpd to service that connection. At least I think that is how it works! Or should work...

I do have those ports forwarded on the router - that's definitely not the cause of the problem, just so that it isn't a red herring for anyone else with this problem.

I have still not reolved the problem and have now given up trying to get it to work. I'm sure that it is some sort of configuration problem, but everything appears to be set up correctly through the MacOSX UI for these things. It may also be a corrupted system file, but I don't currently want to go through a reinstall to try to fix it because of the time and potential disruption involved. I will update to Leopard server when that comes out and hopefully the problem will be fixed then!

The main reason (in a roundabout way - I'm not going to go into details) that I wanted to get this going was to be able to publish calendars from iCal, and hopefully leopard's iCal server will fix the problem in a more straightforward and elegant way.